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The Rhine-Rhone Corridor (RRC) is a major transportation axes associated with two important projects: a high speed train line and a large water canal. The region has been waiting for long for their realization and there are indications that the new territorial governance is looking after them. Indeed, local and regional players are showing up in bigger numbers, they try to renew talk with the central government to discuss the projects. A new RRC may emerge trough a clustering around industrial development and town associations. But the RRC region remains divided into many regional entities which have only recently started to establish a common relationship. It is still a marginal region, away from real metropolitan services, but it is also a testing region: if the RRC projects go through, a new regional system will emerge.

The last decade has been marked by the rise of intercommoned cooperation in both France and Spain. These regroupings of communes took various forms in France : SIVU, SIVOM, all communities of communes or "pays" built around the promotion of a collective project of development. They induce many problems, such as the juxtaposition of zonings and a more difficult reading of the regions' intricacies. Differently, in certain Spanish regions, among others Catalonia, Galicia, Aragon, the “comarca” has become the only intermediate level between region and communes. How are these two models of territorial reconfigurations likely to solve the low density problem? We obviously need more time to answer appropriately this question ; nevertheless, in comparing the “pays” and “comarcas” processes, this article explores some elements of the answer.

The generalization of market-gardening that occurred in the Senoufo savannahs of the North of the Ivory Coast and the West of the Burkina Faso in the 1990s, has confirmed the rural societies' ability to overcome uncertainties. Practiced by individual farmers during the dry season, market-gardening activities take part in a multiplication and diversification process of personal profit-making. It is mainly practiced by women and young men, who do not occupy the leading parts in their respective families. In the context of a diminished family revenue, their incomes have radically changed individual involvements in the collective expenses, especially in health care, which family leaders are no longer exclusively in charge. Such transformations, concerning not only agriculture but also the economy and the society in general, have triggered a reflection on the notion of resilience, increasingly used in the social sciences. A detailed analysis of the various practices of market-gardening enhances the interest of considering anew the often opposed notions of resilience and vulnerability. More extensive and complex meanings are needed to embrace the new issues at stake in the mutation of rural societies and spaces in West Africa.

Source of conflicts as well as of revenues, urban land has become the inevitable prism to understand the dynamics and mutations at play in the African cities. Through the example of the Mauritanian capital, Nouakchott, this article focuses on the actors' strategies, for one part, and on the networks and links existing between politics and urbanization, on the other. Created in 1957, Nouakchott is today inhabited by one million persons. In this section of Sahara, urban sprawl leaded to a general anarchy in spatial use. Authorities have intended to control urbanization, notably by limiting land access. Several laws have been published but, actually, they are frequently ignored. People know the legislation, but they also learnt how to infringe it, in following a few codes and ways of doing. Misinformation and illegality are thus linked to the urban land question. At the end, it can be called a rational informal sector.

Since coming to power in 2004, the coalition government of India, led by the Congress Party, has reiterated its commitment to deliver "development with a human face" and to address in particular the needs of the rural poor, largely excluded from the gains of faster growth during the last decade. This political context provides the backdrop for this study of development strategies designed to support rural small-scale industries, and their spatial implications. Using an historical perspective, three major periods are identified, starting with the policies of the 1950s which are considered quite innovative because of their comprehensive approach, notably their attention to balanced regional development, while promoting growth poles. The focus of these policies on inter-sectorial linkages (between agriculture and industry, between large- and small-scale industries, and also between traditional and modern types of small-scale manufacturing), as well as their consideration of broad demographic issues (e.g. migration, urbanisation) justify revisiting the debate on the role of small-scale industries within an overall development strategy. The major components of these polices are analysed for each period and situated with respect both to major development paradigms and to broad national development goals, taking into consideration their spatial repercussions. For instance, starting in the mid-1980s there was a gradual shift in the focus of support measures in favour of the more competitive segments of the small-scale sector, a decision which benefited the "modern" units, more likely to be located in urban areas, and more integrated into national and international markets than the "traditional" sector. The major relevance of this discussion is that it allows new insights into India's current political economy, at a time when it is pursuing market reforms and becoming increasingly integrated into global economic processes. It underscores the challenges facing policy-makers who are committed to promoting competition in the country, and who recognize at the same time that current industrial development, characterised by spatial polarisation, is increasingly marginalizing many regions and their populations.